Tech Index 2018: Executive Summary

Despite the dynamic nature inherent in the technology sector, the fact that our Tech Index score in 2018 is actually unchanged from its previously recorded level in 2016 suggests that we may well have entered a new era where the concepts of areas such as Digital Transformation, Cloud Computing and Mobile Computing are becoming more commonplace than ever before. That doesn’t mean that the means through which these concepts are being achieved isn’t developing rapidly – but it does suggest that previously emergent technologies are being much more widely adopted and successfully implemented.

Whilst superficially, the individual scores that underpin the overall index have moved very little between the 2016 and 2018 surveys, there is plenty of information in the underlying data that points us to some more specific trends.

Overall, however, we are seeing that:

Cloud Computing adoption has reached a mature stage, and whilst some of the barriers to adoption persist, for most businesses these are now outweighed by the advantages

Issues with Talent Scarcity have never gone away, with the dynamism of emerging tech such as blockchain resulting in acute shortages of people with the desired talent in the newest technologies

Attitudes towards Cyber Security – like Cloud – are maturing, with most businesses unsurprisingly aware of the threats, and with processes in place to mitigate associated risks: this doesn’t mean they are complacent: just better protected

For many businesses, Digital Transformation seems to be a journey rather than a destination, as emerging technologies disrupt already digitised processes, creating budget pressures not foreseen when digital transformation projects were initiated

FinTech has clear strong potential for growth, though one of the barriers to more widespread adoption is the need for regulatory compliance at a time where the rate of development in some of the technologies has outstripped the regulatory framework meant to govern it

The adoption of Big Data as a business resource is now spreading across the enterprise to Finance and Sales teams